


'Til the World Changes

by twined



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, Eventual Happy Ending, I dunno maybe there'll be a sequel?, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Love Confessions, M/M, Pining, These Bois, hold the sweet, i can't, like sometime after this fic ends, more like bitter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-20 02:17:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19368049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twined/pseuds/twined
Summary: “I won’t let you Fall because of me.” Crowley’s voice is hoarse, spitting the words as though they cause him pain. They might. They certainly hurt Aziraphale.----A confession and its aftermath. Set before Good Omens' main events.





	'Til the World Changes

**Author's Note:**

> This little scene got stuck in my head and demanded to be written. I'm sorry in advance.

**_“He shall never know I love him: and that, not because he’s handsome, but because he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made out of, his and mine are the same.”_ **

**_“If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.”_ **

**_Emily Brontë_ ** _**, Wuthering Heights**_

**_\--_ **

It’s the nineteen-seventies, and Crowley’s hair is long again the way Aziraphale has always secretly preferred it. They’re in South Africa—together for the first time in several years—baking in the summer heat on a temporarily-abandoned veranda where they just finished eating dinner. It was delightful, and the gardens are lovely, and Aziraphale has just bared his ethereal soul. Gifted his oldest friend with his deepest secret. Confessed his love, as it were.

It seemed like a good moment for it.

His companion blinks several times. Of every reaction Aziraphale has wistfully imagined and feared, he never expected flabbergasted. Leave it to Crowley to surprise him still.

“No. Absolutely not. Out of the question,” Crowley stutters, almost plaintive and almost angry, “Demons and love. It’s ridiculous, it’s, it’s, it’s antithetical. You aren’t allowed.”  

“As you’re always so quick to point out, when have rules really stopped us before?”

“That’s not the point!”

“Then what is the point?”

“There are _some_ rules—some things—it’s just—it can’t be done. It can’t.”

Aziraphale takes a deep breath—it’s a thing humans do to steel themselves, seal themselves, but he still feels raw—and so he clasps his hands in front of him. “I see…Well. It’s been pleasant, mostly. I’ll see you in the next century or two.” He has no idea if he kept his voice as light and carefree as he wanted it. And he can’t resist one glance back, one last indulgent memory before he wraps his unearthly wings around each individual molecule and tries to take off.

Crowley rips him from his escape, catching his arm mid-miracle. The pair ends up grappled against a wall. Whether Crowley caught him or pushed him would be a matter of semantics. Either way, he is glaring down at the angel. His grip is hot and harsh—were Aziraphale human, he’d be bruised, if not broken by it.

“Don’t you _dare_ leave,” Crowley hisses, “Not after that.” He flings his sunglasses aside, looks the angel up and down. Searches his face with nothing between them. His slit pupils dilate, then contract needle-thin.  Several moments pass where Crowley is struggling to breathe and Aziraphale could swear he is about to be kissed. Ravished. Ravaged.

But several moments pass and neither of them moves.

The angel clears his throat. “I believe we’ve said all there is to say,” he murmurs.

“Shut up.”

Aziraphale resists the urge to roll his eyes, and counts that as a win for Upstairs. The intense study is unnerving, and even worse, his body is—reacting. They’re only touching where Crowley’s hands pin the angel’s forearms to the wall, but they’re just a breath apart besides. Barely that. He lets Crowley look his fill. After all these years, that’s barely a drop in the well of their favors to each other. And it makes a certain energy crackle through him, a certain—lightness and electricity. Crowley looks and looks and if it weren’t for the setting sun, Aziraphale could have sworn he’d stopped time again.

“Why now? After all this time.” Crowley’s calm mask evaporates. His words spit out at greater and greater volume. “Millenia. We were doing _fine_ , we had our unspoken thing, and it was _fine_ until you went and _acknowledged_ it. Now it all has to end and that’s _your fault_ Aziraphale, it’s your fault I lose my best friend now. Because we aren’t allowed to feel that _._ Or we could, but we can’t _say_ it. You absolute _bastard,_ we didn’t have to _stop_ if you never _said_ it! _”_ Crowley breaks away from him then, wiping his hands on his dark bespoke blazer as though to cleanse himself of their touch.

“ _We?”_ Aziraphale asks after a beat.

“ _That’s_ what you took away from all this?” Crowley nearly screeches, though he’ll deny it into the beyond.

“It’s what mattered.”

Aziraphale sounds calm, matter-of-fact, if slightly off-put. In contrast, Crowley’s hands go to yanking his own hair, and he’s pacing round the veranda with more jerkiness than usual in his swagger.

“I won’t—” he starts, once. He points at Aziraphale, then turns away, then paces more. The sky is dimming from red to purple, and the contrast with his eyes is striking. Finally, his demon stalks back to where Aziraphale still waits against the wall. Suddenly close again, Crowley has him pinned, by intensity if not physicality. He briefly chokes on what he’s trying to say.

“I won’t let you Fall because of me.” Crowley’s voice is hoarse, spitting the words as though they cause him pain. They might. They certainly hurt Aziraphale.

“That’s impossible. Angels can’t do wrong, remember?” Aziraphale’s voice is cracking. Is this what humans mean by a broken heart? Even during the Rebellion and the Fall, those worst memories of most angels, his chest had not hurt so.

“Of course they can! _I_ did, that’s how we ended up here!”

“If you feel the same, then what’s the problem?”

“What’s the--! The problem is you’re not _listening._ I’m the sinful one, not you.”

“What I feel for you is not a sin.”

“It is. It would be.”

“It’s not _._ Love _can’t_ be. _”_

Crowley shakes his head. “You don’t get it. Me—feeling for you? Not sinful. Just who I am, who we are. Loving you is right. But you?” he points. “Feeling that for me?” points again. “You can’t love evil, not and stay in Heaven.”

“I’ve loved you over two thousand years. I don’t believe I’ve been cast out yet.”

Crowley makes a noise at that. He kisses Aziraphale like he can’t help it.

Their union is glorious, incredible, fresh-grass-and-woodsmoke, old-books-and-tea, shimmering-chrome-and-roaring-engines, music-swelling-in-the-soundtrack, perfect. And it is started and finished in that short, firm kiss.

Still, Crowley can’t bear to move his face away. Their foreheads touch, their lips brush when he speaks.

“If the world were different. If our sides wouldn’t destroy us. But they _will,_ my angel. We _can’t._ ”

“Have faith, my love.”

He chuckles lowly. “Isn’t that your department?”

“I’ll have faith for both of us, then.”

They share a small, sad smile. Crowley squeezes his arm, and backs away.

Aziraphale can believe in them, in their “someday.” Trying to believe in that would destroy Crowley. Better to forget this, to go back to quietly protecting him and pleasing him and never saying what he really yearns to.

“Til the world changes, then.” He smiles wryly. He summons new glasses.

And this time, he is the one to escape, and Aziraphale lets him go.

\---

( _he never really stops running.)_

_\---_

_(but his angel is always there waiting when he returns.)_

_\---_


End file.
